


The Four Fountains of Visions

by fewlmewn



Series: Original Stories [18]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Essays, Oracles, Priestesses, Prophecy, Temple, Worldbuilding, chronicle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24031024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fewlmewn/pseuds/fewlmewn
Summary: by Yggraja Ez’Haddin, Oracular ChroniclerAn essay illustrating the function of the Temple of Mirrors of Ad Daman, its chambers, how fountains are chosen, and how they deliver their visions.
Series: Original Stories [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1043202
Kudos: 2





	The Four Fountains of Visions

**The Four Fountains of Visions**

by

Yggraja Ez’Haddin, Oracular Chronicler

Four virgyns plucked by Oracular Sight from across the Known World are destined to grand discovery through harrowing trials meant to transform their souls. Chosen before puberty, the young fountains are groomed and educated by the priestesses of the Temple of Mirrors in Ad Daman to connect with their roots. Elemental ancestry awakens within, and the four chosen fountains are led to each of their own assigned chamber.

_The Chamber of Fire_

Walls, ceiling and floor are encased in resistant metal burning ever-bright; braziers located in the four cardinal directions along the south-facing circular room; the centre is occupied by a pool of molten rock – bubbling and boiling with flames and flares bursting from the surface. The virgyn is led to the threshold by the priestesses. If they survive the journey into the lava, their trials end, and a new existence awaits them. Requiring no further sustenance but the fire they’re in, and speaking in tongues for the rest of their life, the Fountain of Fire begins their gestation.

**V E D A K O T H R A R V R E R S A T S E P H E Q A A R R A V E T A**

_The Chamber of Earth_

Perfect architecture hewed from coarse dirt and rock naturally, without artifice, speaks of the portents of Fate, and this west-facing circular room was found as a perfect cavern for the purpose. Unlit, damp and giving off a sensation of constriction, the centre of the chamber hosts a round pit filled with freshly turned dirt. The virgyn is led to the threshold by the priestesses. If they can submerge themselves into the soil without getting buried underneath, their trials end, and a new existence awaits them. Requiring no further sustenance but the earth they’re in, and speaking in tongues for the rest of their life, the Fountain of Earth begins their gestation.

**Z A Q I R E M A R R E K E R S A T A Q I Z S E T H E K K A D O R A**

_The Chamber of Air_

North-facing, the door to this chamber opens into the open air above the cliffs of Ad Daman. Illusory in nature, but rooted in reality, the room replicates the appearance of a Cliffside and, while intangible, walls, a floor and a ceiling are considered to be present, as boundary to the room itself. Night and day alternate within the room, casting it in light or darkness. At the centre of the chamber, only the endless sky stretches in every direction and nothing else. The virgyn is led to the threshold by the priestesses. If they can reach the centre of the room by themselves without falling, flying upwards, or losing their footing, their trials end, and a new existence awaits them. Requiring no further sustenance but the air they’re in, and speaking in tongues for the rest of their life, the Fountain of Air begins their gestation.

**A K A S T A S A K E T H E R A K A S A T M A V I R E M I R R I P H A**

_The Chamber of Water_

Facing east, the door to the chamber opens into a glass domed room similar to the others. The floor is sandy and silt-like, feet dragging and sinking into it with every step. As if by the will of the tides, once the door shuts, the chamber fills with water from the Severald Sea, and the walls become infinite with deep blues. The virgyn is led to the threshold by the priestesses. Left alone, if they can stay into the chamber for the time it takes for water to overcome it without drowning, their trials end, and a new existence awaits them. Requiring no further sustenance but the water they’re in, and speaking in tongues for the rest of their life, the Fountain of Water begins their gestation.

**M E K A R R A V E T H I S T H E K S A T I S M I K A R T A P H A S T A**

Regardless of their nature, the submerged body of a fountain grows heavy with unborn possibility, and the belly swells increasingly as time passes. Once Fate is ripe for the beholding, the Fountains, entranced, speak of what they see in their visions. Eyes of different breeds blink open across their pregnant bellies, gazing into the element the fountain is submerged in – Fire, Earth, Air, Water – granting the Sight into the Elemental Planes. Peculiar occurrences as well as opening portals to the planes are thus seen by the fountains. Priestesses proficient in the tongues spoken by the fountain are vigilant, and commit the prophecy foretold. A conclave of the priestesses gathers in the Room of Mirrors to decide on the scope of the vision beheld, and whether to report it to the Oracle in Saha or to keep it in the annals and archives of the Temple for future safekeeping.

_The Room of Mirrors_

Eight-sided and vaulted with converging sectors, a pinprick hole carved into the pinnacle of the ceiling to let sunlight shine through, the chamber hosts the conclave of priestesses who discuss for many hours the event beheld by the fountains and formulate a response. Eight reflective surfaces cover the walls of the room from floor to apex, broken only by the four doors that lead into corridors to the seats of the fountains. Living quarters and utilities are located elsewhere closer to the surface and to the city of Ad Daman, and the priestesses attend to their duties in shifts, gathering together only when the occasion requires it.

As Fate directs the fountains’ eyes to a certain event, individual or occurrence on their plane of interest, this is committed to memory and spoken of to the attending priestess guarding the fountain from outside their door. The retelling has been known in momentous occasions to even take tangible form, as if a sphere of pure elemental energy were delivered from a fountain’s mouth to a priestess’ ear or hand. The vision is brought to the conclave and in the Room of Mirrors it is discussed.

The priestesses in turn can hypothesize on the outcome and meaning of such sight, disserting for hours what they believe the future will hold if their suggestion came to be. Garnering enough consensus among the conclave allows such hypothesis to be committed into one of the mirrored walls of the chamber. No more than eight such theories can be proposed, and if other members supply more likely outcomes, this replaces the weakest suggestion, but not until many more hours have passed, until the proponent priestess yields her faulty prophecy to the new proposition.

With eight such potential outcomes, the conclave discusses then at length if any one prophecy could hold enough weight over the future of the Known World. If that comes to be the case, the Oracle is notified that a stirring in Fate has been detected, and that further investigation or action might be required to better understand the fountain’s vision and the priestesses’ prophecy. If the conclave deliberates that the vision will not harbor meaningful change, the vision alongside any potential outcomes are committed to written word by scribes and kept in the oracular archives of Ad Daman, under lock and key, lest knowledge of such events came into the hands of individuals or organizations seeking to harness a seemingly innocuous vision into a Fate-changing ordeal.

Great honor is bestowed upon the priestesses who correctly suggest the most likely outcome for one of the fountains’ visions – but such honor is proportional to the difficulty of interpretation of a vision. The more abstract and inscrutable a vision is, the more extraordinary a correct prophecy would be. But many wise priestesses, with the foresight to prophesize events centuries in the making from a simple vision lasting moments, or a few glimpses, unfortunately perish before any of what they’d suggested comes to be. Such is the regrettable destiny of a priestess – that the discovery of her wisdom might only be known many generations after she has passed. The oracular archive in Ad Daman also hosts a stele bearing the names of notorious priestesses of the Temple of Mirrors. The names of notable virgyns chosen to be fountains and whose contribution has changed Fate considerably are instead carved upon the stone walls of the hallways that connect the Room of Mirrors to the elemental chambers. The names of those who are chosen but do not pass their trials or their training are instead written into a ledger, kept in the archives, but their names seem to fade from the pages every few decades, leaving space for several new recruits.

Once a fountain is made, their life expectancy becomes an unknown impossible to foresee, and depends in great part on the toll every vision has on the psychic and physical state of a fountain. All the elemental planes bred violence, unpredictability, instability and are rife with potential energy that poses a challenge on every diviner or soothsayer. Being in close proximity to one of these plains as the fountains come to be is extremely taxing, for the mind who will be ever-present and all-seeing upon those lands, and for the body, estranged from those climates but deeply connected to the same material which constitutes those planes.

Priestesses are trained to keep a close eye upon the fountains, but even they can miss the easily concealed sight of their bellies shriveling, and the eyes that poke through the flesh opening less and less often, until they finally reveal empty sockets. Burned, dug, blown out, blown up holes into the skin of a fountain signal the end of their life cycle, and their bodies survive barely long enough to be seen by an attending priestess before what remains of it is swallowed in the elemental pool around it.

The Oracle knows when such loss happens, and if the necessary prophecy hadn’t already been formulated at the time of a new fountain’s birth, gazing across the material and the ethereal to foresee the birth of the next fountain becomes the Oracle’s priority. The Oracle’s forces mobilize to seek out the virgyn or virgyns who shall undergo training and the trials, and lead them to the island and to Ad Daman, where they’ll enter the Temple of Mirrors, to live and die among the chosens of Fate.

**Author's Note:**

> Some worldbuilding for the country of Emera, which is an "Oracular Republic", led by the teachings given and, ultimately, the decisions made by the Oracle of Saha, the country's capital.


End file.
